Don’t Be Evil

“Don’t be Evil”, a mantra of Google since the turn of the millennium.

The motto was first suggested either by Google employee Paul Buchheit at a meeting about corporate values that took place in early 2000 or in 2001 or, according to another account, by Google engineer Amit Patel in 1999. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out”, adding that the slogan was “also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent”. - Wikipedia

The last line is of particular irony when looking at it from the current year (2021, as of writing). It may have been true when Google was but a small company in the early 2000s, just getting a foothold and slowly revolutionising web search.

Since becoming the corporate behemoth that they are now, however, the reality is very different.

The ‘Evils’ of Google

What to Do?

Don’t use Google.

Okay, okay, we know this isn’t as simple as that. Many of us use, or have used, Google services to some degree. If you don’t, congratulations. See below for some resources on ejecting Google from your life and general privacy oriented information.

Please note this page information is non-exhaustive and still under construction